Statement on Trump’s Executive Order to Sabotage Health Care

Atlanta, GA – Democratic Party of Georgia First Vice Chair Nikema Williams issued the following statement on Donald Trump’s executive order to sabotage the health care marketplace.

“With this executive order, Donald Trump and the Republican Party have made crystal clear the fact that they do not care about the collateral damage—Georgia’s families—in their quest to dismantle a bill that is actually saving lives. The ACA is working, yet Trump is undermining the insurance marketplace—while chipping away at President Obama’s legacy—to score political points with the Republican Party’s base. Democrats believe health care is a human right, not a privilege. To truly improve the quality of life for all Georgians, we call on the GOP to work with Democrats to craft policies that strengthen the security found in quality affordable healthcare.”

Late Thursday evening, the Trump Administration announced the decision to cut ACA subsidies—known as cost-sharing reduction subsidies or CSRs—that reduce the cost of health care for millions of Georgians.

Stopping cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as President Trump has repeatedly threatened, would drive up federal marketplace subsidy costs, raise premiums, cause more insurers to withdraw from the marketplaces, and increase the number of uninsured next year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found today. Key findings include:

Stopping CSR payments would raise federal budget deficits by $6 billion in 2018 and $194 billion over the next ten years, relative to current law, due to increased costs for the ACA’s premium tax credits for low- and moderate-income people to offset their rising premiums (see below).

Marketplace premiums for “silver-level” plans would rise by 20 percent, on average, in 2018. Premiums for such plans would be 25 percent higher in 2020 and thereafter, relative to current law.

Marketplace insurers in some states would withdraw from or not enter the marketplaces in 2018. As a result, the share of the nation’s population living in areas with no marketplace insurers would rise to 5 percent in 2018, up from less than 0.5 percent under current law.

The number of uninsured would rise by 1 million in 2018, relative to current law.